Great Social Media Idea: Year-in-Review Infographic

For as much as I'm not an analytics person - I tend to lean more toward the "fuzzy" side of social ROI rather than getting too caught up in vanity metrics... forest for the trees and what not - I definitely am pretty vigilant about collecting data pretty regularly. Mainly to help provide benchmarks for myself and help me see what's working and what's not, but also so I will have something to show the bosses when the bosses come calling.

While I personally believe the story of social is told in the hearts and minds and not in spreadsheets, the spreadsheets can be very important as an entry point for people who aren't as involved in the day-to-day goings on of social media and want a quick and accessible way to get a snapshot of your school's involvement and its value.

And we all know that even the most boring data can be spiced up with the right visual presentation, so a social media year-in-review infographic makes a lot of sense to 1) give you the opportunity to really dig into the data and do some benchmarking, 2) justify yourself to your bosses, and 3) give your community some cool content to check out and engage with.

But, of course, as with most things, I didn't come up with this on my own... I was inspired by this great infographic from Kate Post of Chico State!

And no, I didn't include this because it gives a shout-out to this blog. But hey, it doesn't hurt, right,? Right!

This is really fun piece for anyone who wants to re-live the year that was in Chico State's social media, but for me it's even more powerful as a snapshot of what happens in higher ed social media for anyone who doesn't really get it or doesn't spend much time at all on social media.

With the explosion of social media use among older deomographics there are fewer people out there who fit into that category, but I've noticed that a lot of people who do tend to be high-level decision makers who are disconnected from that world. Sort of like politicians or CEOs who don't know how much milk costs. You can't really blame them too much - they have huge responsibilities and can't spend their time with every little detail - but it's also incumbent on us to provide them with information in a way that they can easily relate to it and - crucially - not spend much time with it.

This is a really lovely example of a well-made infographic, and it has a nice mix of fun stuff and data points. I liked it so much that I went ahead and did a bootleg version for UP (I even stole the little dots as a design element, which I had to do since I'm VERY FAR from having any graphic design skills) that ended up really data-heavy because... well... I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it.  :)  (But I was sort of shocked when it turns out the photos we posted on Facebook received more than a million views over the course of 2013. That's a fun number to use, even if it's because we post a TON of photos.)

Props, Chico State and Kate, for this great work!